Joyful, Anyway

Joyful, Anyway

$36.00

Biographical Note: Kate Bowler is the three-time New York Times bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason, No Cure for Being Human, Good Enough, The Lives We Actually Have, Blessed, and The Preacher's Wife,...

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Description

Biographical Note:
Kate Bowler is the three-time New York Times bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason, No Cure for Being Human, Good Enough, The Lives We Actually Have, Blessed, and The Preacher's Wife, and hosts the popular podcast Everything Happens. A Duke University professor, she earned a master's of religion from Yale Divinity School and a PhD at Duke University.

Brief Description:
"Life aches. Joy is the cure. After surviving a stage-four cancer diagnosis, Kate Bowler knew she was supposed to be grateful. Alive. Blessed. But she still ached-for more connection, more surprise, less resentment on an ordinary day. So she went looking for joy. Not the toxic positivity kind. Not a 5-step plan. But the type that sneaks in unexpectedly, seemingly out of nowhere. A lemur sunbathing. A belly laugh at a funeral. A dive into the Atlantic with a shark wrangler. In Joyful, Anyway, Bowler takes us on a hilarious and tender journey through big questions and small delights. With wry wit and deep honesty, she explores how joy can surprise us even in the middle of pain, boredom, and longing. This is not a book about fixing your life. It is about how we can all find more-feel more-by making room for small extraordinary moments. For anyone who has ever felt stuck, who is achy for meaning, who feels undone by loss, who feels that joy is just out of reach, who wants, simply, to have more fun, Joyful Anyway is a delicious, insightful tour through the questions that sit in the deepest part of our souls. It proves that for every time we ask: Is this it? Joy will answer: there is more"-- Provided by publisher.

Reading Line:
New York Times bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

Review Quotes:
"With luminous clarity and unsentimental grace, Kate Bowler delivers a meditation on the sacred, vivid, heartbreaking absurdity of being alive. Her prose is both razor sharp and tender, avoiding easy answers (which never help us anyway) while extending a spirit of friendship to all who have suffered and who long to carry on. A deeply moving everyday masterpiece. I loved it." --Elizabeth Gilbert, #1 New York Times bestselling author

"If it feels like joy is missing from your life, drop what you're doing and read this book. Kate Bowler is a beacon--she radiates light even when the world seems dark. Her wisdom is perfectly timed for our tumultuous times." --Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Potential and Think Again, and host of the podcast Re: Thinking

"Bowler's richest and wisest book yet, and if possible, the most charming. Absolutely lovely. It changed me." --Anne Lamott, New York Times bestselling author of Somehow
"A delight from start to finish, Joyful, Anyway embodies the mix of pleasure and aching that makes us human. A book to take you through life's aftermaths." --Katherine May, New York Times bestselling author of Wintering

"A profoundly wise, hilarious, large-hearted and down-to-earth meditation on the fundamental unsolvability of being human--and how it's in the very middle of the mess that joy is waiting to be found. I know I'll be returning to this book again and again." --Oliver Burkeman, New York Times bestselling author of Four Thousand Weeks
" Joyful, Anyway is colorful and layered, unafraid of the occasional gut-punch of raw feeling and vulnerability-much like Kate Bowler herself. She suffers no fools, especially the toxic optimists. With her signature mix of tenderness and ache, Bowler lingers comfortably in the strange terrain where joy and pain don't alternate, but constantly intertwine." --Jerry Seinfeld

Publisher Marketing:
NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A profound, funny, and deeply human case for joy that doesn't depend on everything getting better, from the beloved author of Everything Happens for a Reason and No Cure for Being Human

"Joyful, Anyway is colorful and layered, unafraid of the occasional gut-punch of raw feeling and vulnerability--much like Kate Bowler herself. She suffers no fools, especially the toxic optimists."--Jerry Seinfeld

"A book to take you through life's aftermaths."--Katherine May, New York Times bestselling author of Wintering

True joy--an unmistakable blend of gratitude, hope, and delight--will find you, even in the midst of sadness. Allowing yourself to receive this gift is what will get you through.

We are overwhelmed. Frightening headlines, illness, uncertainty, grief, and email. We are left wondering why, if we're doing everything right, life still feels like an endless game of whack-a-mole. Joyful, Anway is bestselling author Kate Bowler's bracingly honest exploration of this dilemma.

By sharing her personal experience and stories from some of our culture's preeminent historians, philosophers, and religious scholars, Bowler presents an original and inspiring understanding of joy. This is a type of joy that is different from happiness, and it does not depend on resolving the things that make life difficult. Drawing on a decade of living with serious illness and a lifetime, as a divinity professor, studying America's obsession with progress, she shows why the relentless pursuit of happiness may, in fact, keep us from experiencing true joy.

Joy isn't something you can optimize or manufacture. It subverts our expectations, finding us when life rewrites our scripts. Joyful, Anyway offers language for the ache we all carry and practices--loosening control, introducing novelty, choosing charity--that will open us up to the surprising, technicolor moments that pull us back into life. Inspiring, funny, and soulful, Joyful, Anyway is a book you will turn to again and again.

Joy reminds us that no matter what, life is still worth loving. For every time we ask is this it?, joy will answer: There is more.

Review Citations:

  • Booklist 03/01/2026 (EAN 9780593734193, Hardcover)